But the crisis in public management is not (or at least is not just) the cuts, the million or so jobs being lost, or even the welter of reform in the NHS and local government. It's not even the endless tinkering with machinery, such as the home secretary's latest redisorganisation of border control.

The crisis is the death of an idea, the classic understanding of the position of the public official. Old doctrine said civil and other public servants do as they are told, but in a context of mutual respect, allowing them occasionally to say "no, minister" or "no, leader", on the basis of evidence or professional judgment. Do David Cameron, Francis Maude, Jeremy Hunt – and apparatchiks such as David Nicholson – subscribe to such a convention? Did they ever?

Civil servants can close their ears to casual insults from special advisers and shrug at ministers' reflex to blame them rather than their own policies (May again). Council staff are used to incoherence with one minister, Michael Gove, despising and ostracising them while others dump new responsibilities on them. Jeremy Hunt's response to the Francis inquiry has shown his mastery of the blame game.

But how to live with these politicians' premise that nothing public managers do is justified, that markets are always and everywhere superior, that business people are automatically preferable to bureaucrats. Look at the casual way that the transport secretary is removing from public sector the one rail franchise, east coast, despite its profitability and despite its supply of comparative information for benchmarking.

Veterans may be asked whether 2013 is any worse than the 1980s, when Margaret Thatcher could sincerely ask a senior official when he was going "to get a proper job". It is worse, partly because she was instinctual where today's Tories are dogmatic, partly because Cameron's aim is to deconstruct the welfare state itself, a step well beyond Thatcher.

The inauguration this week of several flagship Cameron schemes pull at managerial identity. Is there nothing officials will do as ministers scapegoat the poor, shrink services and create administrative anarchy? It seems not. Civil servants and council staff worship the platonic ideal of "neutral" public service. Mention politics and they get out the cross and garlic. But what does serving the state mean when those in charge want to subvert or even destroy it? The old mantra says "they are democratically elected therefore we must defer" – even when ministers are spreading destruction and confusion.

The alternative is not undemocratic but it is to say that the people who make government and public services work have a deep professional interest in the wellbeing of state and society, and have a right to be listened to, perhaps even a right of veto. They aren't voiceless dogsbodies. So where is the professional voice of public management this week of all weeks?

In health, there's a cacophony of professional voices. Unfortunately, the principal representative of managers, the NHS Confederation, seems long ago to have thrown in its lot with the marketeers and ministers: never saying boo to the goose its motto. In local government, once perky and confident spokespeople have gone quiet.

The result is passivity, give or take anonymised moans and a few critical blogs and tweets. Public managers become their own willing executioners.

David Walker is contributing editor to the Public Leaders Network

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